Boeing History

Thank you for Celebrating our Centennial with us!

Since July 15, 1916, we've been making the impossible, possible. From producing a single canvas-and-wood airplane to transforming how we fly over oceans and into the stars, The Boeing Company has become the world's largest aerospace company. And we're just getting started.

Thank you for making 2016 unforgettable with events, activities and commemorations that celebrated not only our first century of innovation, but also the people and moments that inspire us to live by our founder Bill Boeing's philosophy -- "build something better."

We're writing our next century's history. Come along for a breathtaking flight.

Blazing the Trail of New Technologies

These pages describe the legacy of The Boeing Company, tracking the development of the companies that merged to become a single enterprise as the twentieth century ended.

Workers at these companies built passenger planes, helicopters, warbirds and missiles, satellites and spacecraft. They sent astronauts to the moon and brought cultures together in harmony aboard the International Space Station. Their inventions blazed the trail for today's new technologies.

Products Through Boeing History

During the last 100 years, humans went from walking on Earth to walking on the moon. They went from riding horses to flying jet airplanes. With each decade, aviation technology crossed another frontier, and, with each crossing, the world changed. Browse the products from Boeing and its heritage companies that crossed those frontiers: the hundreds of passenger airplanes, military aircraft, space capsules, rockets and more.

Explore the Defining Moments of Boeing's Past

Throughout our centennial celebration, join us as we dive into our vast collection of Boeing artifacts to explore defining moments of our past. Our new series "The Boeing Archives Presents" brings to life our history through the photos, film, documents and relics that preserve our company's journey. Maintained to capture where we've been and influence where we're going, the Boeing Archives is one of the largest collections of its kind anywhere in the world.

The Boeing Archives Presents Video Series

Aerospace Pioneers

View biographies of the presidents and chief executive officers of Boeing and its heritage companies, such as McDonnell Douglas, North American Aviation, Hughes, Jeppesen and Stearman.